<x-flowed>Well Jim,
You were right, it was VERY obvious where I needed to remove metal.
There were very deep grooves cut into the housing on the "high spots". I
shaved them down with the die grinder and a burr bit. It went very well.
That is until it went really bad.
After milling off all of the aluminum, I wiped out the bell housing, and
used my angle grinder to grind down the mounting bolts which were at that
point the "smallest radius" inside the bell housing. After a few seconds of
grinding, I noticed that the pile of shavings on the cardboard under the car
had erupted into flames. After about 30 seconds of panic, I got the fire
out. All is well, nothing is damaged, but I was pretty shook up. My
initial reaction was to beat out the flames with a quick whack with a nearby
rag. That put out 90% of it, put the remaining 10% scattered into a bunch
of smal fires over a 2 ft radius. At this point, I ran to the door opener,
opened the overhead door, and drug the cardboard outside. There was a small
amount of newspaper that was further under the car that I was able to
quickly put out with my rag. I know that all of you are thinking how stupid
that I am, but it was while the fire was burning, that I thought of earlier
posts from people describing how nicely the VW cases burn on bonfires. I
never considered the flamability of the metal shavings when I picked up the
angle grinder. I am usually pretty anal about not having things like gas
cans nearby etc. I forgot that the metal burns like gas, especially as
shavings. I bare my stupidity so that others can consider this possibility.
I have gotten it all cleaned up, and the engine is ready to go in.
Perhaps tomorrow it will run.
Brad Mularcik

A local guy that builds a lot of VW engines has been advising my on
the performance enhancements that I have made, and suggested that I
needed the o-ring type that was 8 dowel to go with my new counter
weighted crank. He later realized that my old one was a 6V. He then
gave me a nice 12V starter for $20, along with the new bushing for the
transmision.

You probably haven't damaged anything, but you will need to pull the
engine and
clearance the bell housing for the larger 12V ring gear. The ring gear
will
have cut into the case, making it obvious where you need to remove metal.